Read Buffer Overflow

[Andrea Paiano <andrea.paiano () gmail com>]

Hi,
I'm an italian computer science student at Bologna University. For the
graduate I'm writing a thesis/research on buffer overflow problem and
because somewhere i've learned about a kind of buffer overflow called
"read buffer overflow", I want to know if this overflow may be used
only to make DoS attack (which is what I've understand making a 
google search on the topic) or if it can be also used to execute code
like a "standard" write buffer overflow.
Thank you and sorry for my english.
Andrea Paiano.